Firefox in Russia dumps Google for Yandex
Russian-language Firefox users will see a new default search provider soon: Google rival Yandex.
Mozilla currently has Google set to be the default search engine in Russian Firefox, but it concluded that Yandex was the better choice, according to a blog post by Mozilla General Counsel Harvey Anderson on Friday.
"Over the past few months, we have listened to feedback, talked with our localizers, studied the trends of our Firefox Yandex builds, and reviewed the Yandex user experience. All this activity led us to the conclusion that our Russian users really wanted direct access to the Yandex search services in official Firefox RU builds," Anderson said.
"As a result, we're planning on setting Yandex as the default search provider for the Firefox 3.1 Russian locale builds," he said. Version 3.1 is due in coming weeks, after a third beta version is released and tested.
Mozilla gets the vast majority of its revenue through a partnership under which Google shares revenue from search ads. In 2007, that was $66 million of Mozilla's $75 million total revenue.
Details on the change can be seen in the Mozilla bug tracker, which specifically refers to "the new business arrangement between Mozilla and Yandex in Russia."
Stephen Shankland writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered Google, Yahoo, servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stshank.
It's not surprising to see Mozilla do something in return.
Mozilla is ultimately a for-profit corporation like any other. They need customer satisfaction, and revenues. And usually the two goals are linked pretty tightly -- this sounds like once such case. Yandex probably just works better for Russian users. So setting Yandex as the default makes Russians have a better user experience, and possibly download/use/install Firefox in larger numbers. Resulting in more search clicks, and more revenues for Firefox.
Just business -- nothing else.
On a related note -- it's possible that this is the beginning of a trend. We already know that Chinese, Koreans, etc. rarely search on Google. I suspect one reason for that could be that Google search results present an overly US-centric view of the web. Or possibly overly english-centric view. If that's indeed the case, we might end up seeing some big, but local search giants come into play.
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by amgdfathy
January 11, 2009 12:02 PM PST
- good
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